The three keys to any online marketing campaign are acquisition, conversion and retention. Acquisition focuses on generating traffic to your website. Conversion is the percentage of online visitors who take a desired action while retention entails the processes associated with maintaining relationships with your existing clients.
Online Classified Ad directories can be leveraged to attract business for your company. When written correctly and placed in the right media they can render good results for you in terms of customers who are looking to buy what you sell.
An online classified ad post does not need to be lengthy. Howvever, you should place special focus when you are crafting the headline and body copy of the ad. To be effective, the headline and copy must tell readers in just a few short words what you sell, why the reader will want to buy from you and what action you want the reader to take (for instance, click a link for more information , send away for information or call you on the phone.)
The headline should catch the reader’s eye and ‘hook’ them into scanning the rest of the ad copy. Focus on ‘Words that Sell‘. For example, words that promise a benefit such as “free,” “fast,” “reliable” combined with a term that summarizes what the reader wants to acquire works well to encourage the reader’s eye into the rest of the ad.
Although the number of words you can use may be limited by the kind of online classifieds you’re using or by how much you’re willing to spend, don’t cut so many words out of the text that the ad becomes meaningless. To make sure your ad is clear, have a few friends and family members read the ad before you submit it. If they don’t understand what you’re selling and why someone should call you, rewrite the ad.
In addition to helping you sell, Online Classifieds are also beneficial from an SEO perspective. If you have a website, then you can place a link to your website in your online classified ad. Google recognises incoming links as a good ranking criteria.
Some popular Online Classified Ad Directories include: Gumtree and Craigslist. There are obviously many more, however, the effectiveness of your classified ad will depend on several factors including what country you are in and what product you are trying to sell. So do some research around online classified directories that are specific to the country you are in and what you are wanting to sell.
A couple of years ago by having a website was enough. A simple “online brochure” with basic information regarding your company and a basic contact form was the norm. Those days by having a plain website was enough to get noticed by others. Yes, those were the old days of the web and you were considered professional by just having one. The web changed tremendously since then, look at Web 2.0!
Recent statistics shows that there’s more than 226 million websites found on the internet and the number is growing fast. The internet has grown much more crowded and competitive than the days when having a website was enough. Every successful business is on the web – or at least should be. How do you increase your visibility online so that you can stand out from the crowd?
First of all, you have to be creative and understand your audience before you can tackle this topic. The web is powerful business tool if utilized correctly. Once you begin to understand this, the online possibilities are endless. Your website is a online marketing tool.
Every website should have a focus point and a set of objectives. Here is a couple – increase brand awareness, increase your visibility, sales leads, solutions, etc.
Find below a couple of tips to help you make your website stand out from the masses.
Attract
There’s millions of websites on the web. Each websites needs a plan to attract buyers. Traffic to your website can originate from organic SEO, PPC, Social Media Marketing (Web 2.0), referral traffic or even affiliate marketing.
Interact with your visitors
The days are over where marketing messages only gets shoved into the public. People want to engage and interact with what they are reading and interested in. By simply posting your name on your website isn’t enough. Successful businesses are moving into Social Media with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogging. Other options also includes opt in email marketing.
Conversions
Every website should have a conversion part or selling sequence built in. This is not just having a call to action (CTA). It is your sales strategy for a lead or a business call.
By simply contacting your website design company that you would like a new design for your website isn’t enough. You need to create a solid business plan with a set of objectives for your website. What do want to accomplish with your website? Your website is not a simple advertising piece. It is much more than that.
Leave a comment below if you require additional information regarding this topic.
A good website should have well-written, readable, easy-to-navigate pages that aren’t ‘ over loaded’ with keywords to attract ‘searches’ but written with the reader in mind. When selling the benefits need to be explained and your USP’s (unique selling points) for your product or service and most importantly explain what you would like your customer/visitor to do next. Back to Search Engine Marketing – you’ve identified the customers you want to target, you’ve got a ‘search engine friendly’ website and your ‘content’ is written for your visitor – how do you increase new and return ‘traffic’ to your website?
There are two distinct ways of doing this:
1. ‘Organic’ search whereby potential customers find your website in the Search Engine Results Pages without you having to spend a cent on advertising. Organic or ‘natural’ search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance and ‘match’ to the search terms used. It is accepted that users click (organic) search results more often than adverts (72%) but it is also accepted that most people rarely venture further than the first page of search results making it imperative that your business is as far up the ‘rankings’ as possible and preferably in the first 10 spots
2. Using Google adwords. The simplest method to understand, but not necessarily the simplest to implement is the advertising or PPC (Pay per Click) approach. With Pay-Per-Click advertising – you only pay when a potential customer clicks on your advert. The price that you pay per ‘click’ is based on the popularity of the key words that you select and ‘purchase’. Although it is possible to manage your own PPC campaigns it is often more cost-effective to use an Internet Marketing Company that specialises in ‘paid search’ advertising to manage your campaigns and undertake to follow a ‘test and learn’ approach or ongoing split testing.
Leading search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, use web crawlers (also known as ‘bots’ or ‘spiders’) to find pages based on search results. Assuming you have applied ‘search engine essential’ to make your site ‘search engine friendly’ and that you have a critical mass of back links (Linking Strategy)from other relevant websites then you need to concentrate on content marketing. Content can be text, images or video but it needs to be relevant and engaging and it needs to be regularly updated. Don’t stress – you probably have a lot of this content already ‘in-house’ and it just needs to be re-written and edited for the web. Content can consist of existing sales brochures, press releases and short articles by in-house experts, video, whitepapers or presentations used at conferences or trade-shows.
The importance of good content mustn’t be underestimated as apart from the fact that good relevant content will bring ‘searchers’ to you it is that same content that will engage the visitor when they arrive at your site and one of the best strategies is to have ‘landing pages’ created by SEO experts so that a prospective customer will land on the page providing the information being looked for at the exact time they are looking when clicking on a PPC ad or using the relevant key words contained there in.. One great way of succinctly answering all of those questions is with an online video, the additional benefit being that search engines are turning more and more to something called ‘blended search’ which includes video, local, news and book content in the top 10 search engine results pages and you can also use the video on social media sites like YouTube that brings additional exposure and more traffic.
If you don’t provide the information that a potential customer is looking for and a clearly communicated ‘next step’ they are very quickly going to click the ‘back’ button and find what they are looking for elsewhere. You need to get people to your website and then you need to tell them very quickly exactly ‘what’s in for them’, you need to keep their interest, sell the benefits of why they should do business with you and then make it as easy as possible for them to contact you.
Search Engine Marketing is a key part of business success but as with all marketing you need to keep reviewing and improving to stay ahead of the competition and the best strategy is to use an ‘expert’ who will work with you like www.wsioms.co.za who can provide an on-line competitor analysis to constantly monitor what your competitors are doing on-line.
About the author: Jamie MacLeod has over 25 years experienc in direct and digital marketing strategy and implemetation and and can contacted for comment via email jamie@wsioms.co.a
Whether a business wants to expand its products or services, or introduce new ones, success depends on how effectively it promotes itself via marketing. Marketing’ is all about deciding who your customers are, what they want and then developing a cunning plan to sell your products or services to them make money in the process. In the past, this primarily meant creating a brand name and promoting a product via print, television, radio and possibly direct mail campaigns if you had access to a database.
However, with the advent of the Internet, marketing has taken on a whole new meaning and business owners and managers now have the medium of “cyberspace” or the ‘world wide web’ at their fingertips. The best of both worlds–offline and online marketing can and should be combined effectively to drive sales higher. Cyberspace allows us to market online in a variety of ways: corporate websites, banner ads, email, blogs, Podcasts, RSS Feeds, and the many social media opportunities like Youtube, linkedIn, Twitter etc and of course….. search engine keywords–the list is virtually endless!
However, there is still a place for the standard offline marketing tactics, so it only makes sense to integrate marketing strategies to achieve your goals. Integrated marketing is really about allowing marketing decision-makers to view the entire marketing process from beginning to end, thereby providing insight into which combination of tactics will drive the highest returns.
Benefits of Integrated Marketing
1. Traditional advertising strategies merge with online approaches to market a product or service across all possible marketing domains and channels
2. Analysis of integrated marketing strategies allows you to use online mediums to measure offline advertising. Companies now have the ability to measure successful strategies and more importantly learn from the ones that are not.
The key to successful integration of marketing strategies is: Getting your customer engaged
The beauty of ‘search’ marketing as opposed to more traditional forms of advertising whereby you had to catch a prospects attention when they were doing something else like watching TV or reading a magazine is that by ‘definition’ they are ‘searching’. While this might seem obvious, potential customers when in ‘searching mode’ are looking for instant gratification. When they get to your website they want to quickly understand;
– What you do
– How you can solve their current problem
– What are your USP’s –
-Why should they choose you
If you or your company need assistance in creating an integrated strategy talk to us at www.wsioms.co.za or drop a line to me jamie@wsioms.co.za and we would be happy to assist with creating an integrated digital marketing plan for your business.
Many companies have had to reevaluate their marketing budgets during the recession. According to the 2009 ANA/MMA Marketing Accountability Survey, three quarters of marketers had their adspend decreased this year, and two thirds are expected to drive more sales with an equal or lesser budget.
Thankfully, digital media/online marketing has softenend the marketing budget blow for many. More and more companies are now competing in their respective industries on popular search engines like Google. The June 2009 poll indicates that the number 1 strategy for marketers that want to campaign effectively without spending more was to move from traditional media (print, television, radio) to digital media.
Some of the tactics employed by marketers to improve marketing effectiveness in order of popularity include:
Fourty percent of the companies surveyed said that senior management viewed marketing as “an expense”, however, sixty percent viewed marketing costs as “investing in their brand “.
In 2009, businesses no matter how big or small, are viewing the online environment as a worthy platform upon which to market themselves. Although competition is fierce, those companies that take the time to learn about Internet Marketing, SEO, and web analytics will reap the ROI rewards offered by being in the top position of Google.